The LSRS: Will it Change How We Report Biofuel Emissions?

For years, the events and entertainment industry has pointed to biofuels as one of its cleaner choices. HVO instead of diesel. Lower tailpipe emissions. Carbon-neutral combustion. A credible, near-term solution while the infrastructure for electrification catches up.

That story has not been wrong. But it has always been incomplete, and a new international standard, taking effect on 1 January 2027, is about to make that incompleteness impossible to ignore.

In January 2026, the GHG Protocol published the Land Sector and Removals Standard (LSR Standard): the first GHG Protocol standard to set formal accounting requirements for land emissions, CO₂ removals, and related metrics. Developed over five years through an international multi-stakeholder process involving hundreds of companies, scientists, and NGOs, it does not just expand what companies must report. It changes the conditions under which biofuel combustion emissions can be excluded from the physical GHG inventory at all.

The IPCC estimates that the agriculture, forestry, and other land use sector is responsible for approximately 22 percent of annual net anthropogenic GHG emissions globally. 

For decades, that figure has sat largely outside standard corporate GHG accounting. The LSR Standard closes that gap, and in doing so, it forces a tough question: when an organisation reports biofuel use as low-carbon, what is that claim actually based on?

In this article, we’ll cover:

• What Is the Land Sector and Removals Standard?
• How Biofuel Emissions Have Been Reported, Until Now
• What the LSR Standard Changes
• What Is Carbon Leakage, and Why Does It Matter?
• The Two Scenarios: What This Means in Practice
• What This Means for the Events and Entertainment Industry
• What Should Organisations Do Now?

From the top…

What Is the Land Sector and Removals Standard?

The GHG Protocol is the globally dominant framework for corporate greenhouse gas accounting: the foundation on which the vast majority of corporate GHG inventories, sustainability reports, and Net Zero targets are built. When it publishes a new standard, organisations do not get to opt out of its implications.

The LSR Standard is the Protocol's first standard dedicated to land sector emissions and CO₂ removals. Its scope covers land management and land use change, CO₂ removals stored in land and geologic carbon pools, and, critically, emissions from biogenic products across the value chain.

It takes effect on 1 January 2027. The guidance document follows in the second quarter of 2026. That leaves a narrower window than it appears to understand what the Standard requires and to gather the data needed to meet it.

How Biofuel Emissions Have Been Reported: Until Now

The traditional approach to biofuel accounting rests on a straightforward rationale: biofuels, over their lifetime, absorb roughly the same amount of carbon they release when burned. On that basis, direct CO₂ emissions from biofuel combustion have generally been excluded from the physical GHG inventory — treated as carbon-neutral, or close enough to it.

This logic has supported the growing adoption of fuels like HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) as a lower-emission alternative to diesel. Our guide to HVO and its role in the events and entertainment industry sets out why HVO has gained traction across live events: and why the assumption of carbon neutrality has long been baked into those emissions calculations.

Under the LSR Standard, that assumption is no longer unconditional.

What the LSR Standard Changes

The LSR Standard is direct on this point: "Biogenic product CO₂ emissions are not zero, and biogenic products cannot be assumed to be carbon neutral." It notes that biomass combustion releases CO₂ at a rate per energy content comparable to fossil fuels. The difference lies in what happens upstream… and whether that upstream picture is actually accounted for.

Under Requirement 17 of the Standard, companies that purchase, consume, or sell non-food, non-feed biogenic products, including bioenergy feedstocks, must account for biogenic product CO₂ emissions across scope 1, scope 2, and scope 3. The key question is how those emissions are reported.

There are two scenarios, and which one applies depends on what a company can actually evidence:

Scenario 1

If a company accounts for and reports all life cycle GHG emissions associated with the biogenic product, including net land carbon stock changes of sourcing lands, and also accounts for and reports land carbon leakage where required, then biogenic CO₂ emissions may be reported separately from the physical GHG inventory, under "gross CO₂ fluxes." In effect, this preserves the existing approach: the combustion emissions sit outside the primary inventory.

Scenario 2

If a company cannot meet both of those conditions, either because the life cycle emissions are unknown or unverified, or because land carbon leakage has not been accounted for, then biogenic product CO₂ emissions must be included in the physical GHG inventory, under "land emissions."

This is a big shift. The conditions that allow biofuel emissions to be excluded are now explicit, and they require evidence, not assumption.

What Is Carbon Leakage, and Why Does It Matter?

Carbon leakage is one of the two conditions that determines how biofuel emissions are reported, and it is also one of the least understood concepts in corporate sustainability accounting.

Under the LSR Standard, land carbon leakage refers specifically to the GHG impact of displaced food or feed production caused by corporate actions. 

When agricultural crops are used for non-food, non-feed purposes, including crop-based biofuels, food or feed production that would otherwise have occurred on that land is displaced.

That displaced production has to go somewhere, which typically drives agricultural land expansion elsewhere. When native ecosystems are converted to agricultural land to compensate, carbon is lost from plants and soils. That loss is what the Standard calls land carbon leakage.

This is not a theoretical risk. The LSR Standard identifies the use of food or agricultural products for non-food, non-feed purposes, explicitly including crop-based biofuels, as a "high leakage risk activity." Where that applies, companies are required to quantify leakage and report it separately under the "land carbon leakage" accounting category.

For organisations using crop-derived biofuels, this is a direct requirement. 

For those using waste-based or residue-derived biofuels: HVO from used cooking oil, for example, the leakage picture is more complex and depends on traceability and the specific feedstock sourcing chain. Understanding what ESG means in the context of live events and media now extends to understanding the land use implications of the fuels those events run on.

The Two Scenarios: What This Means in Practice

The practical decision most organisations face under the LSR Standard comes down to two options:

Option A 

Assume the conditions are met and continue reporting biofuels as currently. In a European context, this may be defensible for certain fuels. EU regulatory frameworks, including the Renewable Energy Directive (RED III) and, in the UK, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), set sustainability criteria for biofuels, which may provide some of the underlying land use data needed. If an organisation can demonstrate that it sources biofuels meeting those criteria, and can trace that sourcing to the country of origin at a minimum, the case for Scenario 1 is stronger.

But "may be defensible" is not the same as "is evidenced." The LSR Standard does not defer to regulatory compliance as sufficient proof of lifecycle accounting. It requires companies to have the data themselves, including annual net land carbon stock changes of sourcing lands and documented carbon leakage assessment.

Option B

Take a conservative stance and include biofuel emissions in the physical GHG inventory unless both conditions are explicitly evidenced. This is the more cautious approach, and for many organisations, particularly those with limited visibility into their biofuel supply chains, it is also the more honest one.

The risk of staying with Option A without the evidence to back it is increasingly familiar territory in this sector: sustainability claims that do not match the underlying data. 

That is no longer just a reputational issue. As the FCA's anti-greenwashing rule makes clear, the consequences of unsubstantiated claims are now formal and enforceable. And as we have set out previously, “why greenwashing is no longer a communications issue but a governance one”: the accountability sits at the board level.

What This Means for the Events and Entertainment Industry

The events and entertainment sector has a specific and significant stake in this shift.

Live events run heavily on temporary power: and as our UK Events and Diesel Use report documents, that temporary power has historically meant diesel generators. The industry has moved, rightly, towards biofuel alternatives. HVO in particular has been positioned as a credible near-term solution, with lower tailpipe emissions, drop-in compatibility with existing equipment, and increasingly available at scale.

That positioning has been partly built on the assumption that biofuel combustion emissions can be excluded from GHG inventories. Under the LSR Standard, that exclusion now has conditions attached. Organisations using HVO derived from food crop feedstocks face a higher evidential burden than those using waste-derived HVO: but both need to understand their supply chain well enough to demonstrate which scenario applies to them.

There is a second layer to this. The MIT Climate Machine study, a collaboration involving Hope Solutions, Live Nation, Warner Music Group and Coldplay, drawing on data from more than 80,000 events, showed that travel accounts for 77 percent of live music emissions in the UK.

Temporary power is a smaller share of the total, but it is the share the industry has the most direct control over. 

If the basis on which biofuel savings are being claimed starts to require more rigorous evidence, the headline reductions being reported across the sector will need to be supported by substantially more detailed supply chain data than most organisations currently hold.

Whether the industry is genuinely on track for Net Zero (a question we explored in our autumn check-in on the music, media and entertainment sector) depends in part on whether the emissions reductions being counted are the ones actually being achieved. The LSR Standard raises the bar for answering that question honestly.

What Should Organisations Do Now?

The LSR Standard takes effect on 1 January 2027. That is not far away, and the data needed to meet its conditions cannot be assembled in the weeks before a compliance deadline.

There are four things worth doing now.

Audit your biofuel supply chain

If your organisation uses biofuels, in operations or across the value chain, establish what the feedstock is, where it is sourced from, and what land use data is available at the country of origin level at a minimum. The LSR Standard sets traceability as a prerequisite for Scenario 1 reporting.

Assess leakage risk

If the biofuels in your supply chain are derived from food or feed crops, you have a high leakage risk activity under the Standard. That requires quantification and reporting of land carbon leakage, which requires a methodology and data, not a judgment call.

Review your current GHG inventory

Understand where biogenic CO₂ emissions currently sit in your reporting. If they are excluded from the physical inventory, identify whether that exclusion meets the LSR Standard's conditions or whether reclassification will be required.

Don't conflate regulatory compliance with GHG Protocol compliance

Meeting RTFO or RED III sustainability criteria is not the same as meeting the LSR Standard's accounting requirements. The two frameworks serve different purposes. Understanding what a credible Net Zero strategy actually requires means being clear on that distinction and not assuming one substitutes for the other.

The standard does not prohibit biofuels. It does not undermine their role as a transitional solution in sectors like live events, where electrification is not yet viable at scale. What it does is require organisations to earn the accounting treatment they apply to them: with evidence, rather than assumption.

Hope Solutions works with organisations across the music, media, and entertainment industry to build GHG inventories that are accurate, defensible, and aligned with the latest international standards. If the Land Sector and Removals Standard raises questions about how your organisation currently accounts for biofuel emissions, get in touch.